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Sunday, February 28, 2010

Crocus Leaves in the Grass! And a Gluck Poem

You gotta look hard, especially when you aren't used to looking for anything the last 4 months, but they are everywhere. Snow crocus. Just behind the melting snow line. Snow-less crocus.

Nostos

There was an apple tree in the yard --
this would have been
forty years ago -- behind,
only meadows. Drifts
of crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at that window:
late April. Spring
flowers in the neighbor's yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after? Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from the tennis courts --
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.

Dear Benjamin, Thank you for picking my latest posting, through which I have found you.

It is to my shame that I only know a little about Louise Gluck, but shall look her up to find out more. I found of particular interest her thought that we only look at things once in childhood. It is certainly true for me that in the very early spring when there is relatively little in flower, I observe things much more closely than when summer brings so many distractions.

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Why hello there. Fancy meeting you on the bottom of the page. You should be well aware that everything on this page is copyrighted, and if I find it elsewhere--uncredited and with no permission from me--I will come after you, and you will lose. It's the law. Now you know.